Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley: what it is about, its context, and how Shelley uses language, form and structure.
Key quotations and how to analyse them, and the poems in the cluster it compares well with, with similarities and differences.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'I met a traveller from an antique land', 'Half sunk a shattered visage lies', 'sneer of cold command', 'The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed', 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings', 'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!', 'Nothing beside remains', 'The lone and level sands stretch far away'.
Form: a sonnet with two turns, at 'And on the pedestal these words appear' and at 'Nothing beside remains'.
Context: Shelley's sonnet contest with Horace Smith, the head of Ramesses II, and the poem as an attack on tyranny.
Comparisons with My Last Duchess, London, the extract from The Prelude and Tissue.
